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Comment by alberth | Hacker News Reader

If Apple was a European company, I really wonder if EU would be putting all these restrictions on Apple.

Yes EU would. Believe it or not, companies in the EU currently have to comply with the same EU laws.

There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA. That will likely affect the dynamic of how the EU perceives any complaints about the law by companies.

Edit: I was incorrect. Booking.com, based in the EU, was added earlier this year. See below

> There are zero EU companies designated as gatekeepers by the DMA.

Not true. Booking.com is also designated as a gatekeeper and is based in the Netherlands. Yeah, they're the only one, but there are only seven designated gatekeepers total.

Ah thank you. I see my error, there were six non-EU companies originally designated last year. Booking was added earlier this year, and I missed that.

Though I would note that Booking.com are a subsidiary of an American company, Booking.

> Though I would note that Booking.com are a subsidiary of an American company, Booking.

Good point, yes. They were sold to Priceline.com in 2005 which has since renamed to Booking Holdings. However, they were founded in the Netherlands, are still based there (unlike their American parent company), and are still a major tech employer there. They’re European enough for this particular discussion.

The EU wouldn't need to if the US gave a crap about regulating their own companies. What's the state of privacy regulations in the US? Anti-trust? Power cable standardisation? Nothing. Well then.

I'm not surprised though. Whenever companies are "forced" to abide by California's more stringent regulations (such as with cars), I always see Americans bitch and moan about how unfair it is. Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation.

It's weird and disturbing.

> Instead of trying to improve things, some of you just don't seem to care about anything except the bottomline of some billion dollar corporation. > > It's weird and disturbing.

In that vein... https://www.wfae.org/energy-environment/2024-04-12/florida-b...

Probably not, but in that case, the U.S. would fill that void instead. It's a wonderful symbiotic relationship where countries don't give a shit about other countries' pet companies. God forbid if the EU would actually be strict with the automotive industry of Germany. God forbid if the U.S. would actually be strict with their tech industry.

Yeah, and that's arguably the reason why there is no European Apple, or Facebook, or Google, or Microsoft...

Popular soundbite but not true.

When the US was making leaps in technological and computing advancements around the 60s, one third of Europe was under the iron curtain and its economic stagnation. The other two thirds had just about finished rebuilding their infrastructure and amenities after World War 2.

The Marshall Plan led to the establishment of very strong trade relationships between the US and Europe, and it was a time of economic boom in the US. The Cold War led to technological advancements in computing, communication, and aerospace, where the US government funded much tech the like ARPANET to stay ahead of the Soviets in all these fields.

You take a stable business environment not disrupted by world wars, a government showering businesses with free hand-me-down technologies, and a huge economic boom fuelled by a whole continent of people suddenly looking to buy your products (some of which are computers), and you get Silicon Valley just a decade later.

When Woz was tinkering on the first Apple computers with Jobs, their peers in East Germany were looking for ways to go around the Berlin Wall. The economic circumstances and business opportunities couldn't have been more different.

Believe it or not, in the 1970s and 80s when Apple and Microsoft were born, Europe didn't have many of the consumer rights protections that it has today. It was largely focused on protecting its people from the USSR. In many European countries, consumer rights came into political focus only in the last 20 or so years.

Today things are different. European Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all exist and I believe are incorporated in Ireland. These companies do a large portion of their business in Europe. And if you consider today's tech, EU is very competitive with the US. In fintech, Revolut, Klarna and Adyen have similar user numbers as US alternatives. In AI, Google DeepMind is and has always been a UK company, and Graphcore makes NVIDIA's specialised AI chips. In the EV space, you may have heard of Volkswagen, Porsche, Land Rover, etc. In the business environment, SAP dominates ERP worldwide. And in games, you may have heard of Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, Arkane, Playground Games, and many other European companies. The list goes on and on.

The argument that Europe didn't form Silicon Valley post WW2 because of its current consumer protection laws is inane. Or that Europe doesn't have the same FANGMAN companies that operate in the US, or that it doesn't have strong tech competitors in the global space on the scale of FANGMAN. There were much larger forces at play than being able/not able to delete the App Store in the formation and development of tech hubs around the world.

I don't think your examples really prove your point. You include 100 year old auto manufacturers, companies long acquired by US tech giants, and a failing AI hardware company that has nothing to do with Nvidia. Probably the most valid example is SAP but even then it's in the slowest moving most bureaucratic ridden industry.

OTH there's Spotify which isn't any better than Google, Facebook or Apple when it comes to enshittifying their user experience.

Also:

https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2023/imy-issue...

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